OSC Showcases Initiatives at International Supercomputing Conference

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Nov 3, 2005) — 

The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) will showcase its Blue Collar Computing and Third Frontier Network (TFN) initiatives by highlighting these projects and more at Supercomputing 2005 (SC|05). A week-long international supercomputing conference, SC|05 is the world's leading event for high performance computing and research, and is a hotbed of collaboration opportunities. The conference will be held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, on November 12-18.

OSC's showcase will feature staff and guest presentations and demonstrations, including the popular MATLAB mini-symposium. Leading experts from Procter & Gamble, the Council on Competitiveness, MathWorks, OpenFPGA, GridChem and computational science initiatives will speak on groundbreaking topics affecting the quickly evolving world of high performance computing (HPC) .

"In seven years, OSC has cultivated a strong exhibiting presence in the world's premiere supercomputing conference," said Stan Ahalt, OSC Executive Director. "We take this opportunity to showcase the programs that have established OSC as a national leader in high performance computing, networking, and research."

During the conference, OSC will focus on both Blue Collar Computing and the TFN. Blue Collar Computing -- "HPC for the Rest of Us" -- is a national initiative to make HPC easily accessible across the full spectrum of industry and research by rethinking HPC software, hardware and training. OSC's Computational Science Initiative is a related program that creates dynamic partnerships among K-20 educational institutions to train a diverse population of students for the leading-edge technical careers of the future.

TFN, the nation's most advanced statewide fiber-optic network designed to enhance education, research and economic development regionally, will feature a live demonstration of its collaborative measurement and testing research projects. The Live Performance Monitoring of TFN-Abilene-ADECnet Network Paths demonstration features TFN (OARnet Network Backbone), Abilene (Internet2 Network Backbone) and ADECnet (American Distance Education Consortium Network Backbone) network paths using the "ActiveMon." ActiveMon is an open-source software developed at OARnet, OSC's networking division.

Other demonstrations include:

  • iWarp , a remote direct memory access (RDMA) technique to create high-end custom network fabrics to increase performance;
  • A face recognition application using parallel MATLAB matching live video camera images of SC|05 attendees with a database of more than a thousand faces;
  • A StorCloud demonstration from The Ohio State University's Department of Biomedical Informatics featuring oil reservoir management and biomedical imaging.

Another highlight is OSC-Springfield, a Department of Energy (DOE) center focused on data-intensive computing issues such as bioinformatics, computational biology, data warehouse applications, and earth science and materials modeling. An interactive touch monitor addresses OSC's outreach programs, bioinformatics and biomedical groups, homeland security applications, and training areas.

About OSC
The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) is Ohio's high performance computing, networking, and research center. The Center provides scientific computing, networking, educational outreach, and information technology resources to state and national high performance computing and networking groups. OSC empowers its academic, industrial, and government partners to make Ohio the education and technology state of the future. More information about OSC can be found at www.osc.edu.

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